musings on living a brave & badass life

Posted on June 1st, 2015

2015 has kicked my ass in someserious ways. There have been many moments of feeling ungrounded in my body, unkind in my mind, and unsure in my heart. Mostly I have wanted to run away and yet I have been practicing staying. Practicing simply being with the truth of the moment. Not trying to fix it, fix myself. Staying. Being where I am, even the uncomfortable places. Instead of hurrying up to try to change things (my usual), I have been allowing myself to practice communing with whatever is happening around me and within me.

Sometimes I confuse not running away from my feelings with not taking care of them. I fall into believing that if I am practicing acceptance and surrender then I shouldn’t engage in the practices that I know shift things for me; that the two are somehow in conflict. Essentially I abandon self-care in the name of not running away from my feelings. It goes a little something like this: Okay, I’m sad and I’m going to stay with it so I should not write in my journal or practice yoga or call a friend because that would be running away from it. (Total BS, for the record.) I confuse being in it with wallowing in it. Being in it means practicing right alongside the feeling. Writing it out. Crying in Child’s Pose. Calling a friend and speaking my truth. Not to try to change it but to commune with it. Unsurprisingly, once I accept and honor the feelings they usually do shift without any fighting or forcing.

There is a difference between pain and suffering. Being where you are, even when it is painful, and practicing acceptance doesn’t mean you have to suffer. We can learn to walk this middle path of allowing and honoring, of releasing resistance of our pain while also doing the practices for taking care of our pain. Capturing myself in a self-portrait (aka selfie) is one of my practices for taking care of myself in this manner. A selfie paired with a few true words grounds me in the most beautiful way. When I allow myself to be seen in my truth everything starts to shift and the amazing women in my tribe tell me witnessing this process shifts things for them too. I want more of us to experience the gift of being seen in this way.